Once a year, the Trachten Group invites all of the
senior citizens in Oberwil to the community house for lunch and a little
entertainment.

This year it was on a Wednesday and
Herbert's parents were in Oberwil. Since Herberts
mother, Frieda, knows many of
the people in our village, she went with me. I enjoyed having her
with me, but was a little nervous with her sitting in the front row of the
audience.

I was even more nervous when I realized that
the six dances that we would do were 'old' dances that everyone knew - everyone
but me, who had only joined the group in the last six months. To
make it even more stressful, Andreas, one of the group leaders who I
usually dance with, was not there. I danced with Elisabeth and she
doesn't speak English. I did my best to follow what everyone else
was doing, but it always seemed that when I was going forward and everyone
else was going backwards, Elisabeth and I were positioned right in front
of the audience.

When the 'entertainment' was over, I went
over to check on Frieda. She gently touched my arm and said, "Sue,
you need to learn the dances." She said this in her ever sweet way
of saying things, but I knew she thought I always danced like that.
I quickly scanned my brain for all of the Swiss German I knew and tried to
think of how I could explain to her that my dancing is not so bad when we
dance the dances that we dance every Wednesday evening. All I could
come up with was, "Ya, e vase." (Yes, I know.)